The present invention relates to an electronic system, which is made up of a plurality of electronic components.
An example of such a system is the comfort and convenience electronics of a motor vehicle, which includes, e.g., an audio-video system, a navigation system, an air conditioner, and other similar components. In this context, the individual components are designed to be autonomous, i.e., fully functional for their respective fields of application alone. To this end, the components are provided with separate input and output units and a separate control unit. Hardware and software are united in a common housing. Because of the limited space in motor vehicles, effort is made in various areas to allow a more efficient design of such systems. First of all, multifunctional control units were developed, which are used as a common input and output unit for a plurality of components. The different components of multifunctional control units have a common, central graphics surface, which is formed by a monitor or an LCD display, touch-screen designs also being conventional. This display unit is assigned a control unit, which interprets the specific inputs and transmits them to the corresponding components or their control units. These multifunctional control units may eliminate the need for separate input and output units, which would otherwise have to be built into the console. In addition, it is conventional that the different components may be interconnected by a bus configuration. In this manner, the different control units can access the data of the other control units and sensors, which means that the multiple acquisition of certain data can be eliminated. The disadvantage of such electrical systems is the lack of ability of an electronic component to access parts of other electrical components, so that many redundant component parts are used, which increase the cost of the electrical system as a whole and occupy a large amount of space. In addition, the interfaces of electrical components belonging to autonomous units are mostly proprietary, so that an exchange of their data is severely limited and synergism of the functions is not possible in most cases. Most of the electronic components may to be replaced when the system is expanded or improved.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a flexible electronic system, which may be scaled, is simple and compact, and has improved options for upgrading and functional integration.
The above and other beneficial objects of the present invention are achieved by providing an electronic system as described herein.
To this end, an example embodiment of an electronic system according to the present invention includes only one central control unit, which is connected to the electronic components by a bus configuration. The central control unit includes a memory device, in which available functions and specific parameters of each electronic component are stored. The central control unit generates a function selection, which may then be displayed via a central graphics interface. This arrangement eliminates the input and output units and the corresponding control units for the individual electronic components. The device-specific data of the electronic components is abstracted or transformed into a format not specific to a device. In this manner, the central control unit may control the existing electronic components and, if necessary, merge their functionality together, so that the number of possible, implementable functions becomes greater than the sum of the individual functions of the electronic components. In addition, this electronic system may allow individual parts of electronic components to be used for functions not specific to a component. Therefore, any multimedia data may be transported and transformed, and functions may be generated from the data, using software engineering alone.
The system may be retrofit in a simple manner, and the system may be easily adaptable to different equipment. In view of the retrofit capability, xe2x80x9cplug and playxe2x80x9d is implemented by the electronic system. If a new electronic component is integrated into the system, then, in a login procedure, it transmits its parameters to the central control unit, which then saves them in the memory device, so that the central control unit may then use the new function and possibly display it in the graphics interface, if the function software is already configured for these expansion possibilities. In the same manner, different equipment may be produced by simply exchanging the graphics processing software for the graphics interface, given the same hardware set-up and the same function software. The central control unit may take the form of a PC.
In a further example embodiment, the bus configuration may take the form of an MOST bus (media oriented systems transfer). The electronic system may communicate with components of the comfort and convenience electronics in a motor vehicle, using gateways. In this context, the communication with the safety-related components, which may be connected by a CAN bus, may occur via CAN gateways, the communication with other networks such as mobile radio networks taking place via a wireless gateway.
The wireless gateway may have a modular configuration, i.e., the wireless gateway is configured to have several interfaces for possible, connectible transmitting/receiving units for communicating with external networks.
The electronic system may be integrated in a motor vehicle for the comfort and convenience electronics. In principle, the components of the drive unit, such as the transmission control unit, may also be integrated, but this may increase the requirements regarding the functional reliability of the CAN gateway and the control units in question.
The present invention is described below on the basis of an example embodiment.